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I have a very unpopular opinion that pulls me in two directions. Advertisements have exceeded the point of being a nuisance for many years. But adblocking is a

by colept 9y ago

I have a very unpopular opinion that pulls me in two directions. Advertisements have exceeded the point of being a nuisance for many years. But adblocking is a fight that solves symptoms and will affect more than just advertising in a negative way. The best parallel I can draw is to the Napster era when pirating music cut off the head of the chicken in the industry. Hollywood and like were refusing to adjust to digital downloads and streaming. Part of this was due to the fact that it would drive down profits. But people started pirating the content and getting it for free so they lost money anyways. It's not impossible, but it has become more difficult for artists to break into the industry (along with competition) because of the margin of profitability. In that same vein - publishers and advertisers have resisted the market and have bled their visitors for every penny. Finally the users stood up and said enough is enough - and now we have adblocking. The problem I have with adblocking is that it doesn't resolve the problem, just the symptoms. Adblocking pushes out smalltime publishers whose only revenue are these obtrusive ads. The "big guys" can stay alive as the reduction will be drops in the water for them. The way I see adblocking is that it will only drive the publishing industry further towards monopolies who will push the little guys out. And once you are getting all your content from 1-3 sources and the little guys are gone - there's nothing to stop them from becoming the same monoliths that exist as Internet Service Providers. They control the means and have no urge to change. I stand on the fence, wishing there was a better solution to this problem but some times the only way to bring change is to burn it down first and start from scratch.

CaptSpify 9y ago
IMO: The problem is an economic one. Our economic models are so out of touch with reality that there's no way to solve this peacefully within our current system. There's no reason for middle-men or gateways in distributing digital media anymore, but we still don't have a reliable alternative to pay the artist. The distribution middle-men used to do that.
- colept 9y ago
  This is the problem that is grabbing at me. Well put.
djsumdog 9y ago
There are solutions. Things like Patreon: http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-patreon-is-disrupting-youtube-and-other-ad-supported-services/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-patreon-is-disrupting-yout... Patreon is interesting because they host no (well very little) content, and can help some creators with a tip jar (some make $10/month) and others with a sustainable wage. It's a more well though out Flattr. ..and the thing is, everyone gets the end creation. Supporters get some extras or behind the scenes or rewards, but a small subset of fans can essentially support big projects that are often made available to everyone. Some youtubers use only Patreon and have removed all sponsored content/ads. Support via ads is really not the way to go. To quite David Firth: "...Advertising is dog shit anyway. I don’t like all that subliminal suggesting; it’s poison..."
ams6110 9y ago
> it has become more difficult for artists to break into the industry I would argue it's easier than ever for artists. Anyone can easily get their music onto a variety of sharing and download sites. You don't need a studio to record and produce your music, you can do it on a laptop. And you don't need to make physical copies of your music anymore. Sure it's probably hard to break out of the "noise" of all the artists doing the above. And it may be harder to actually make money as a music artist. But that's never been easy. In the old days unless you were a true supergroup the studios ended up with most of the money.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
jetpks 9y ago
> The best parallel I can draw is to the Napster era when pirating music cut off the head of the chicken in the industry. I don't think this comparison holds up. Napster was a peer to peer network where publishers of the works being downloaded had no control over who was able to download what. By contrast, web publishers have extraordinarily fine grained control over distribution of their works. For example, when I connect to nytimes.com to read some news, I politely ask the nytimes.com servers for access by saying: GET /some/article HTTP/1.1 The NYTimes, or literally ANY publisher on the web, have the option to say no right there for any reason. They are under zero obligation to give me access to content I'm requesting. If publishers are upset about people reading their content without displaying ads, maybe they should stop giving it all away for free.
- colept 9y ago
  > If publishers are upset about people reading their content without displaying ads, maybe they should stop giving it all away for free. Hence, monopolies. Small timers won't be able to afford the lack of revenue.
legulere 9y ago
Advertising has crossed that line much earlier: at the beginning of the 20th when advertising stopped being based on facts and started being about emotions. Current advertising is immoral because it is trying to shut down our rational thinking to drive us into consumerism that is destroying the world. This goes even against the basics of the free market idea.
makecheck 9y ago
The tools for "ad blocking" are NOT just for ads and arguably ads are their least important function lately. These days I am far more likely to use element-level blocking tools such as uBlock Origin to maintain my sanity in the face of TERRIBLE web design. Now that I can make any stupid popover or poorly-placed "div" go away forever, I'll never go back.
mahyarm 9y ago
All of this adblock tech works on domain blocking for the most part. If they wanted to, they could host the ads on the first party server and most ad blocking wouldn't work anymore. They haven't yet, so it hasn't gotten to the point where they have been forced to. This adblock whining / detection lets publishers keep third party ad hosting and reduce adblock usage.

by colept 9y ago

CaptSpify 9y ago

IMO: The problem is an economic one. Our economic models are so out of touch with reality that there's no way to solve this peacefully within our current system. There's no reason for middle-men or gateways in distributing digital media anymore, but we still don't have a reliable alternative to pay the artist. The distribution middle-men used to do that.

colept 9y ago
This is the problem that is grabbing at me. Well put.

djsumdog 9y ago

There are solutions. Things like Patreon: http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-patreon-is-disrupting-youtube-and-other-ad-supported-services/ http://penguindreams.org/blog/how-patreon-is-disrupting-yout... Patreon is interesting because they host no (well very little) content, and can help some creators with a tip jar (some make $10/month) and others with a sustainable wage. It's a more well though out Flattr. ..and the thing is, everyone gets the end creation. Supporters get some extras or behind the scenes or rewards, but a small subset of fans can essentially support big projects that are often made available to everyone. Some youtubers use only Patreon and have removed all sponsored content/ads. Support via ads is really not the way to go. To quite David Firth: "...Advertising is dog shit anyway. I don’t like all that subliminal suggesting; it’s poison..."

ams6110 9y ago

> it has become more difficult for artists to break into the industry I would argue it's easier than ever for artists. Anyone can easily get their music onto a variety of sharing and download sites. You don't need a studio to record and produce your music, you can do it on a laptop. And you don't need to make physical copies of your music anymore. Sure it's probably hard to break out of the "noise" of all the artists doing the above. And it may be harder to actually make money as a music artist. But that's never been easy. In the old days unless you were a true supergroup the studios ended up with most of the money.

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

jetpks 9y ago

> The best parallel I can draw is to the Napster era when pirating music cut off the head of the chicken in the industry. I don't think this comparison holds up. Napster was a peer to peer network where publishers of the works being downloaded had no control over who was able to download what. By contrast, web publishers have extraordinarily fine grained control over distribution of their works. For example, when I connect to nytimes.com to read some news, I politely ask the nytimes.com servers for access by saying: GET /some/article HTTP/1.1 The NYTimes, or literally ANY publisher on the web, have the option to say no right there for any reason. They are under zero obligation to give me access to content I'm requesting. If publishers are upset about people reading their content without displaying ads, maybe they should stop giving it all away for free.

colept 9y ago
> If publishers are upset about people reading their content without displaying ads, maybe they should stop giving it all away for free. Hence, monopolies. Small timers won't be able to afford the lack of revenue.

legulere 9y ago

Advertising has crossed that line much earlier: at the beginning of the 20th when advertising stopped being based on facts and started being about emotions. Current advertising is immoral because it is trying to shut down our rational thinking to drive us into consumerism that is destroying the world. This goes even against the basics of the free market idea.

makecheck 9y ago

The tools for "ad blocking" are NOT just for ads and arguably ads are their least important function lately. These days I am far more likely to use element-level blocking tools such as uBlock Origin to maintain my sanity in the face of TERRIBLE web design. Now that I can make any stupid popover or poorly-placed "div" go away forever, I'll never go back.

mahyarm 9y ago

All of this adblock tech works on domain blocking for the most part. If they wanted to, they could host the ads on the first party server and most ad blocking wouldn't work anymore. They haven't yet, so it hasn't gotten to the point where they have been forced to. This adblock whining / detection lets publishers keep third party ad hosting and reduce adblock usage.